Wanting Sheila Dead(92)

“They watch video,” Sheila said. “Everything the girls do officially, and a lot of what they do unofficially, is taped. We play the videos back in judging and they vote on that.”

“And do their votes count? If they wanted to eliminate a girl you wanted to keep, or if they wanted to keep a girl you wanted to eliminate—”

“I get to do it my way,” Sheila said. “It’s one of the perks of being not only the star but the producer. I own this show—lock, stock, and barrel. It isn’t even leveraged. We had to borrow money the first two cycles, but since then we’ve been doing fine. We’ve got a cash basis accounting system. You have no idea how cheap it is to do one of these shows. Or how much money they make.”

“All of which, I presume, is good.”

“Of course it’s good. It’s better than good. People got stupid. Writers and actors and producers. I don’t know what it is about some people. Most people, really. It’s as if they can’t count.” Sheila came around to the front of the stairs and sat down. She now looked not only old, but tired. “They got—everybody wanted more money. The union  s wanted more money. The stars wanted more money. The producers wanted more money. But it’s a different world now. Not so many people watch television, and when they do, they can watch hundreds of channels. They don’t always go to just a couple. The old broadcast channels are absolutely dying. The cable channels have fragmented audiences. Nobody has the kind of share they did in the sixties. So they can all want more money, but that doesn’t mean they can get it.”

Gregor was suddenly interested. “But you didn’t want more money? I thought you just said that a show like this made a lot.”

“Of course it does,” Sheila said. “It makes a lot because it doesn’t spend a lot. For one thing, I don’t have to pay actors. The girls don’t get paid. They’re considered contestants on a game show. So that eliminates one big huge budget problem. There doesn’t need to be a writer, never mind an entire room full of writers. That eliminates another budget problem. And then, due to the nature of the thing, we can save money on down the line: no expensive sets, no costumes because the girls bring their own clothes, an absolute ton of time filmed on stationary cameras plugged into walls that don’t even need a cameraman to run them. Fifteen years from now, the union  s are going to fall apart. People want to work.”

Out in the distance somewhere, there was the sound of a siren. Gregor and Sheila both looked toward the door at once.

Gregor stood up. “I’d better get ready for this one,” he said.

Sheila Dunham stood up, too. She was right below him, and although she was tall, she wasn’t a match for his own six feet four. She retreated down the stairs and watched him come after her.

Then she leaned very close to him and said, “It wasn’t Mallory. That girl in the study. Olivia wants me to think that was who it was, but I’ve seen Mallory just last year. It wasn’t Mallory.”

Gregor had no idea who Mallory was. The police sirens were right up to the front door. He stood still in the middle of the foyer and waited for the trouble to start.





2


Len Borstoi was the first through the door when the police came in, and he didn’t bother to knock. Gregor filed that away for later. It was probably against two dozen laws and a mountain of court cases. Borstoi was followed by two uniformed officers, both of them with their guns drawn. Gregor’s head hurt. The girls did what they could be expected to do when they saw the guns. They screamed and started running around the foyer. The girl called Coraline was sobbing. The one called Janice who had tried to go to the bathroom before was jumping all over the place as if her underwear had been invaded by ants.

Another siren started coming up the drive. Gregor looked up and through the open front door and saw that it was an ambulance. He wanted to sit back down and go to sleep.

The policewoman who was charged with guarding the study came up to Len Borstoi and said something to him, too quietly for Gregor to hear—but then, Gregor was not trying to hear. Borstoi went to the doorway of the living room and looked in. Then he went into the room. Gregor moved just enough so that he could see what the detective was doing. He was staring down at the gun on the carpet. Then he was walking around the room. Then he was walking up to the wall around the hearth. The living room was huge, and he walked all around that, too.

He came back into the foyer, and Gregor looked him straight in the face. “If you don’t mind,” he said, knowing that the man minded, “I’d like to know where the bullet holes are.”